The Scrum Master is in charge of meeting deadlines, controlling the project, reporting progress, and providing individual performance reports to management. Following that, you must assess your team and determine the type of Scrum Master you require. Certifications and training are two very important judging criterias’. That’s why your candidate must have attained PSM training as well as certification.
The phone or face-to-face interview is one of the first steps in the recruitment process (after HR screening). During those activities, Scrum Masters must be present so that they can assess the candidate’s skills, Scrum/Agile knowledge, or Project/Team fit; and HR representatives must be present so that they can learn more about the candidate’s personality, reasons for applying for the job, and whether the candidate has completed his Professional Scrum Master certification and fits the organization/company culture or not.
A good Scrum Master can be hired by looking into these 3 main areas:
- Technical: This individual is familiar with Software Development. Is familiar with technology has read about patterns, clean code, QA, architecture, technical debt, versioning, and knows how programmers work. Is the candidate aware of software/not a matter of man hours.
- Skills: He/she has a high level of understanding of how to deal with conflict and sell ideas to management and clients. He is a fantastic and enthusiastic communicator, as well as a fantastic storyteller. He is concerned with motivation and knows how to motivate his team. He is completely unyielding when it comes to personal growth and development.
- Agile: This individual comprehends the origins, values, principles, and essence of Agile Software Development. Knows about Lean, eliminating waste, focusing on value delivery, small batch production, delivering working software on a regular basis, and adapting to change. He is never satisfied with the status and is always looking for ways to improve. He has a variety of methods for conducting a retrospective. He is familiar with Agile technical concepts and techniques, as well as how to introduce them to the team, such as pair programming, test/acceptance testing/behavior-driven development, continuous integration, collective code ownership, and coding standards.
Apart from this, you can try implying these activities during the interview:
- Allow the team to interview him (and hire him at your own risk if the team dislikes him.
- Allow him to conduct a brief retrospective (over one single topic, for example)
- Request that he conduct an Agile Assessment of your institution by conducting interviews with project managers and developers.
- Bring him to a Scrumban board and ask him for suggestions for improvements.
To have well-structured interviews, divide them into five sections:
- Knowledge of the Scrum Framework and an Agile Mindset
- Previous Work Experience
- Organization Scrum Master
- Traits/Characteristics
- Real-Life Experience/Use Cases
For each of these sections, a different set of questions can be asked:
Knowledge of Scrum Framework and an Agile mindset
- During Sprint, what metrics do you monitor?
- How do you manage the process while also assisting the team in meeting the Sprint Goal? What methods do you use to manage risks in your projects?
- Are you a member of the Scrum/Agile Community?
- What books would you recommend to someone who is just getting started with Scrum?
Previous work experience
- Why did you decide to become an SM?
- Describe a typical day in the life of a Scrum Master.
- What words would Dev Team members use to describe you?
- How big were the projects you worked on as an SM?
Organization/Project/Team Fit Scrum Master Traits/Characteristics
- What would you be doing within your first month at our company if you were hired?
- What type of project do you want to work on?
- Describe your ideal company or organization’s culture.
Traits/Characteristics
- What is your understanding of the role of the SM?
- What kind of skills should one have?
Real-Life Experience/Use Cases
- You’ve recently been hired as a new Scrum Master. The team you’ll be working with has no experience with Agile and is skeptical of Scrum. They want to concentrate solely on coding and do not want to track their progress or attend meetings. How do you persuade and inspire them to use Scrum?
By assessing all these skills organizations can hire Scrum Masters easily at no risk.
